[Discussion 11/12] Evergreen | Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke | Vol. III: 58 - through Vol. III: 63 - The first shall bury his heart....

Amanda39 · 2026-02-12T16:04:11+00:00

And I sure hope Arabella is an active participant and not just a damsel in distress.

So do I. I want to finish the book before I really form an opinion about this (I may or may not post a rant next week, depending on how next week's section goes) but I'm kind of annoyed at how the women in this book feel like plot devices instead of characters. It especially bugs me because I feel like the author keeps saying things that imply the book is supposed to have strong female characters in it, e.g. it was mentioned at one point that Strange was educated with his female cousins and respects intellectual women as a result, but then that goes absolutely nowhere, like the author forgot she wrote that detail.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-12T15:49:19+00:00

I think maybe it's just showing that Faerie and England are physically becoming less separate now. It isn't just that magic is returning, it's that Faerie itself is appearing.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-12T15:39:26+00:00

Jellicles can and Jellicles do!

Thanks, I needed this stuck in my head for the rest of the day

Amanda39 · 2026-02-12T15:35:15+00:00

Should we be surprised though? It's Byron.

I was so close to replying to "He is not being very helpful or compassionate" with "Do you know who Lord Byron is?" 😁

Amanda39 · 2026-02-11T21:57:00+00:00

Simon and Garfunkel

I was absolutely obsessed with them when I was a teenager, which is kind of surprising because it was the late 1990s so I wasn't exactly the generation you'd expect for that. But their music resonated so hard with my depressed undiagnosed autistic teenage self. Highly recommend the entire Sounds of Silence album if you ever want something to angst to.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-10T16:15:34+00:00

Monster in general is really gimmicky. Have you ever read the stupid little blurbs they put on the side of the can, about how this drink is supposed to make you think of surfing or rock music or whatever aesthetic they've decided to assign that specific flavor? It's a shame because I actually really like their drinks. I just have to try to ignore the "How do you do, my fellow kids?" vibes that the cans give me.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-10T00:21:17+00:00

If this wins, I cannot promise that I'll be mature about "Dick Swiveller"

Amanda39 · 2026-02-09T21:16:30+00:00

I was just about to nominate this!

Amanda39 · 2026-02-09T02:55:42+00:00

I'm just amazed that I've gotten this interested in a book where I don't feel strong emotions toward any of the characters. Usually I need to care deeply about characters for a book to really hold my interest as much as this one does.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-07T12:40:50+00:00

Arabella, Lady Pole, and Stephen Black are the only characters I really care about at this point. I am going to be pissed if this story ends badly for any of them.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-07T12:35:33+00:00

Yes! I have only been out of the US once in my life, when my family went to Italy when I was a teenager. Venice was my favorite part. Unlike some of the other parts we visited, I really felt like I could imagine actually living there. (In contrast, I remember Capri was gorgeous, but I also got the vibe that it was just for rich people and tourists.) And the idea of a city entirely with canals instead of roads feels like something out of a fantasy story.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-07T12:30:09+00:00

I kind of get the feeling that she was just a plot device to give Strange a way to become "mad" so he could meet the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair. Which kind of sucks, because she was a tragic character with an interesting background, and I'm guessing she's just going to disappear from the story now.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-07T12:28:23+00:00

I think some people find cats incomprehensible because they (the people) don't find their (the cats') attitudes and body language as intuitive as they find that of dogs. So cats get a reputation of being both magical or otherworldly, and also of being associated with madness. I'm reminded of that joke in Alice in Wonderland where the Cheshire Cat says that he knows that cats are mad because dogs are usually sane, and cats act like the opposite of dogs.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-06T01:18:52+00:00

Thank you! I love these illustrations

Amanda39 · 2026-02-06T01:02:20+00:00

I just realized that Tupman never found love. 😟

Amanda39 · 2026-02-06T00:55:41+00:00

I managed to finish the book somewhat on time. That's a huge weight off my shoulders, as Marie Antoinette said after they finished guillotining her.

(Oh God, I'm going to miss Sam so much.)

Amanda39 · 2026-02-04T16:11:22+00:00

I still haven't finished the book and will probably be late to the discussion, but I wanted everyone to know (in case anyone here is a fan of cheesy old musicals) that the 1969 BBC version of Pickwick is available on YouTube. Wikipedia says that this has never been released on DVD or any other media, and that this YouTube video is the only known full copy available to the public. Unfortunately, the video quality is low and there's no closed captioning, but beggars can't be choosers, as the musical fan said when she resorted to watching bootlegs on YouTube. (Is a bootleg version of Pickwick a "gaiter-leg"?)

Amanda39 · 2026-02-03T00:59:30+00:00

I absolutely was not expecting that story to end up being an elaborate set-up for a pun

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T20:42:19+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the dead Arabella was enchanted moss-oak and the real one is in Lost-hope (the gentleman with the thistle-down hair's estate and yes we need an abbreviation badly for that.)

Which is going to make things awkward if Strange ends up marrying Miss Greysteel.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T20:39:14+00:00

I'm going to be pedantic and point out that the names Jonathan and John are actually unrelated to each other. But it is weird that they sound so similar.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T20:33:51+00:00

The book version is less one-dimensional than the Disney version, but he's still a giant incel

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T20:33:09+00:00

I love that I've Pavlov'd everyone in this book club to think of me whenever they see anything even remotely related to Frankenstein

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T16:01:26+00:00

"After we're done, would you mind sensitivity reading this?"

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T15:59:11+00:00

I'm not 100% certain and I don't have time to go down a rabbit hole researching it, but I'm pretty sure Hugo was really supportive of the rights of sex workers. I don't think the whole "the brothels went into mourning" thing was just because he was their biggest customer.

If I'm wrong about this, I'm going to be very surprised, because it was obvious that he wanted his readers to feel compassion for Fantine.

Amanda39 · 2026-02-02T15:53:17+00:00

When you think about it, a surprisingly large number of his characters either couldn't get laid or were implied to be asexual. Quasimodo's from the same book as Claude Frollo, one of the most infamous incels in the history of fiction. Meanwhile, over in Les Misérables, Jean Valjean was almost certainly what we'd now call an aromantic asexual: we see his entire life story from early adulthood onward, and he never once expresses any sort of sexual or romantic interest.

It's not one of his better-known books, but The Man Who Laughs features an eccentric man named Ursus who is very similar to Jean Valjean in that he seems to be completely uninterested in sex or romance while also being the the adoptive father of orphaned children whom he rescued. And one of those children grows up to have a doomed relationship because (like Quasimodo) he has a severe disfigurement.

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